Electronic receipts company chaired by Lord MacLaurin to base operation in Malta

Paperless Receipts Ltd, which enables retailers to generate and send electronic receipts to customers’ cloud accounts, is to base its international operations in Malta, the company said yesterday. The Malta company is named eReceipts International and will have Paul Apap Bologna and Christian Ganado among its directors.

One of the UK’s fastest growing technology companies, Paperless Receipts is chaired by Lord Ian MacLaurin who, as chief executive of Tesco plc, introduced the Clubcard. The product helped propel Tesco from fourth-largest retailer in the UK to the country’s number one. Lord MacLaurin is also a former chairman of Vodafone.

“We have several large retail clients in Malta which will be announced shortly,” Paul Apap Bologna said. “”We have pledged to offer preferential rates to early adopters of the technology. We already have strong interest from a number of international retailers and the major software houses. eReceipts is not a question of ‘if’, it is a question of ‘when’”.

While providing significant environmental and cost savings by eliminating the need for paper receipts, eReceipts also allows retailers to build detailed data profiles of customers. This information can be used for geo-located and time specific coupons to help boost sales and drive loyalty.

The company explained Malta has been selected as the ideal base for the company to found its international operations for a range of benefits, which include its central location from which to expand into mainland Europe.

Its history means it has an in-depth understanding of working with Anglo-Saxon, North African and Latin cultures and habits. The Maltese market is also “incredibly diverse and is home to many of Europe’s leading high street brands and hotel chains”, Paperless Receipts said.

“eReceipts takes loyalty to the next level,” Lord MacLaurin said. “It provides retailers with a universal mechanism for tracking and targeting all customers irrespective of channel or payment method. The benefits for retailers are vast as they will be able to create more detailed profiling than ever before which in turn will allow them to tailor product offers and ultimately increase sales and customer retention.”

The company was founded in January 2011. Investors include retail, data and finance personalities such as Robert Diamond, the former chief executive of datamining experts Emnos, the Wright Family, the Kiddicare.com founders, and Peter Gardner, the seed investor in Last.fm.

The market has been proven in the UK and eReceipts is looking to expand to expand internationally using Malta as the launch pad for this growth.

“To base our international operations in Malta is a no-brainer. Malta offers a very favourable tax environment, its laws are similar to those in the UK, it has an excellent talent pool particularly in regards to IT and its retail industry is highly advanced with most of the major international brands being operated by franchisees,” Paperless Receipts chief executive Andrew Carroll said.